Pastor's Corner ~ "Greatness in the Kingdom of God"

Nothing shows how much the disciples have been missing the point that Jesus has been telling them about his impending death than in today’s gospel. The gospel that we have today is the continuation of the last Sunday’s Gospel where Jesus also revealed to his disciples that he would suffer and die, and Peter, in his impulsiveness, started to rebuke
Jesus about this prediction. One would think that after that revelation from Christ himself, they would have understood and believed already, but clearly today’s gospel shows us that they didn’t take seriously what Jesus told them about his impending suffering and eventual death. Jesus must have sensed it — that’s why he reminded them about it again in today’s gospel: "The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death, the Son of Man will rise.” Sadly, again, they didn’t understand. And, much more frustrating on the part of Jesus, was that they were more concerned about who would be the greatest among them while Jesus was discussing with them his death. It is quite interesting and ironic that as Jesus was embracing total humility and selflessness, the disciples were increasing their pride and falling deeper into selfishness. It’s like a situation that I found myself in several years ago during an anointing, which I
probably shared here before. When I was anointing an elderly man in his own room, I could hear his children arguing forcefully about their inheritance in the living room. It must have been heartbreaking for a dying father to hear that what his children were more concerned about at that very difficult and painful situation was what they would get after his death. This is also what Jesus must have felt when he heard that his disciples were arguing who was the greatest among them. Jesus told them that "If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all." What we see here is that the standard of greatness in the kingdom of God is loving service, which is quite the opposite of the world’s present understanding of power and greatness based on wealth, influence or skill.
Loving service is the realization that I don’t exist on my own, and that I have a responsibility towards others around me, which means that I have to see my personal existence in relation to others. Jesus defined this loving service in Mark 10:38 as “drinking the cup that he drinks and be baptized in the very same baptism that he had.” What does this mean? It means that to truly embrace Christianity is to willingly take the risk to go outside of our comfort zones, to expand and open up our self-imposed barriers on how our faith should be practiced and lived solely on our own individual terms to the point of rejecting others. In my own faith journey, there was a time when I asked myself and asked God why did he choose to suffer and die in order to redeem us? I mentioned this already before in one of my articles. As God, he could have chosen another way to save us without shedding a single drop of blood, without being mocked and crucified, yet he lovingly preferred to go outside of his comfort zone, to go outside of his “God zone” and embraced our very own humanity. In this very manner of embracing our own humanity, Jesus showed us that each one of us matters to God. If God was so moved by our own frailties and willingly shared in our humanity, why are we not moved with the struggles and difficulties of others around us, especially that we share in one human family? The kind of service that Jesus was talking in the Gospel is not simply feeling pity or sorry for others who are struggling in life – the poor, the homeless, the disabled, the aged, those who were abused in whatever form, those who feel ostracized because of race, gender or religion. At times, we don’t have to look too far to find those people that I mentioned –sometimes, we find them in our own families, in our workplaces, or in our church communities. We have the moral obligation to extend our help to them according to our own means. This is the public aspect of our faith, which oftentimes is only confined to the corners of sacred spaces. To stress this point, Jesus took a child in the gospel today and set the child in front of the disciples. Children, as a scripture scholars puts it, “have no
influence at all; they cannot advance a career nor enhance a person’s prestige; children cannot give us things.” It is the other way around. Children need things; they must have things done for them. So, Jesus says “whoever welcomes the poor, the ordinary people, the people who have no influence and no wealth, and no power, is welcoming me, is welcoming God.” This is radically different from one’s desire at times to be associated with those who are influential, rich and powerful. Or to cultivate friendships with those who can do things for us and whose influence can be useful for us. – Fr. Cary